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Can Romney close the digital divide?

The impression many outside the campaign have is that Obama’s efforts are more dynamic and interactive, that Romney’s messages on Facebook, Twitter and other outlets are banal and one-directional.

“Look at BarackObama.Com and you see it says ‘Time’s limited, urgent, five weeks to go, 2012 debates, find a watch party,’” said Daniel Kreiss, assistant professor at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill and author of “Taking Our Country Back: The Crafting of Networked Politics From Howard Dean to Barack Obama.” At MittRomney.Com, by contrast, “I’m asked to grab a bite with Paul Ryan. It could be any day on the campaign.”

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Moffatt challenged that conventional wisdom, referencing a study released recently by the analytics firm Socialbakers that he said shows Romney enjoys more engagement by followers and fans than Obama despite the president’s bigger audiences and more frequent tweets and status updates. Yet several other studies, including one by Pew Research, view Obama as leading, reflecting how easy it is to spin these metrics. The Socialbakers study, for instance, also noted that Obama’s tweet reacting to Clint Eastwood’s empty-chair routine at the RNC enjoyed six times as many retweets as Romney’s tweet announcing Ryan as his running mate.

Moffatt does have his bonafides. A Stanford graduate, his first campaign was in 2001 New York City Mayor Michael Bloomberg, followed by key roles in the city’s host committee for the 2004 Republican National Convention and President George W. Bush’s successful re-election. He took on various roles for the national GOP and after the 2008 campaign he co-founded the GOP online campaign firm Targeted Victory. The firm handled digital strategy for Rubio among others.

“We have what we need to be successful in November,” Moffatt said. “They are so caught up in their vanity metrics; they’re so caught up in all of their ‘We’re smarter than everyone’ hubris. They are convinced that they’re smarter than the marketplace.”

This article first appeared on POLITICO Pro at 5:24 a.m. on October 25, 2012.

“If you were looking for a bunch of partisan rhetoric, I’m probably not your guy.”

“If you can’t beat your opponent’s ideas, you distort those ideas — maybe you just make some up. If you don’t have a record to run on, then you paint your opponent as somebody people should run away from. You make big elections about small things.”

“We have to get to the point where we can have a conversation about big important issues that matter to the American people without vitriol, without name calling, without the assumptions of the worst in other people’s motives.”